SPOTLIGHT Bulletin Board Idea

During my first year of teaching, and Fellows year, I conducted an action research project on using nonfiction text during read alouds and how it affected students reading nonfiction on their own. During that year, with guidance from my mentor, we created a hanging bulletin board where I would "Spotlight" the nonfiction text we were reading for the week. It was a great resource and reminder for students of the books we had read and were available to them as readers. 

Fast forward to my current 5th grade classroom. I am fortunate to have a HUUUGE wall in the back of my room. The past few years, I've bounced back and forth between what to put on that wall and this year I decided to create another spotlight!

Because I teach three sections of science, the bulk of my material posted on the wall revolves around our science content. If you're like me, I am constantly swapping out posters and materials depending on what we are studying. One of our first "spotlights" will be on the scientific method, once we move onto weather, I will change out the posters and objectives for our next unit. 

What bulletin boards do you have around your room spotlight content areas? Share your ideas with me!

Going for GOLD!

I'm a BIG fan of the Olympics - I'm not partial to the Summer or Winter games, I enjoy them all! The best part about the Winter Olympics is being able to share the excitement with my students. 

Source

During the summer games in 2012, I blogged about a yummy gold medal I created for some friends. On Friday, in honor of the Opening Ceremonies, I had my students create yummy medals (read about those here) and I photographed each one with their new Olympic bling. Naturally, most them of them chose to take a bite out of their medal. :)

Under our inspiring headline, "We are Going for Gold in 2014" I stapled their cute little faces on the board as a daily reminder to go for the GOLD each day this year! 

How are you celebrating the Winter Olympics with your students?

Encouraging Greatness

Right around the time of the 2012 London Olympics, our principal started off the school year by showing us the Nike "Find Your Greatness" video. He wanted us to encourage students to find their greatness and start the year with motivation to do great things. Last year, I had my kids write short bios on why they were great underneath the heading "FIND YOUR GREATNESS".  It was a great activity and an extremely uplifting one!

Last year came to a close and those giant "FIND YOUR GREATNESS" letters stayed on the wall. I couldn't quite figure out what to put under them again, AND it had taken me for-ev-er to glue each individual letter on the wall. Therefore, I made the executive decision to leave them hanging. 

Yesterday, due to another snow day, I had some free time to let my creative juices flow. I decided to update my lonely "FIND YOUR GREATNESS" letters with encouraging quotes from men, women, and Kid President to start off our 2014 year!

My hope is for students to feel encouraged and uplifted after reading these powerful quotations from people from our past and present. 

Happy Wednesday!

Nuts & Bolts of 5th Grade

Bulletin boards are one of my favorite parts of preparing my classroom for the school year. I spend, way way way, too much time sketching out my ideas and pinning pictures of what inspires me. 

If you're a follower of my blog, you may have read about my Reading Graffiti board here. On black butcher paper, my students pulled favorite quotes from their personal books and wrote them on our class graffiti board. At the end of the year, we had compiled incredible quotes from many different genres of books. To start the year, I am going to use the same graffiti concept except begin with student's pictures instead of quotations. On the first day of school, I will photograph all of my students and print the pictures. Once I have the pictures printed, I'll stick them on our "Nuts & Bolts" bulletin board. I will give each students a metallic sharpie and let them write their name and write a little tid-bit about themselves on the board. Viola! We have our bulletin board full of cute faces and smiles. 

Pardon the crease. :)

What bulletin boards do you have planned? Do share!

Book Hall of Fame

As a little end of the year activity, my class voted on a Book Hall of Fame!

Students were given the chance to nominate ANY book they read this year or in previous years. We compiled a huge list of titles on the computer. Once I had everything copied and ready, students voted on their top five choices. 

Our classroom TOP 3 winners were:

Wonder by R.J. Palacio 

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve

Now, I have a bulletin board ready with book suggestions for next year's students! Hopefully, my students next year will use the billboard when selecting books to start the year. 

What bulletin boards do you have planned? Do share! I'm a planner. :)

Acting a Little Crazy

Holy moly! It's summer vacation. I know this for SURE because It's 9:00 AM on a Thursday, I'm in my pajamas, and I'm watching Kelly Ripa on TV. Yes .. Yes.. this IS real life.

The last day of school was a roller coaster of emotions. While signing yearbooks, I almost lost it (several times) when one student shouted, "Ms. Furnell.. I've been looking for you EVERYWHERE." Little moments! I am so excited to continue my fun as a teacher in 5th grade next year.

Of course, I'm crazy - and I started planning for next year. It's what I do. I plan, plan, plan, and plan some more. I've even already planned an itinerary for a vacation in two weeks. I can't help it!

Continuing with my crazy planning, I started working on a bulletin board for next year. Next year, I am going to utilize a theme of "Discovery" for my classroom. I'm going to tie everything back to this idea of discovering new knowledge, new information, new frontiers, etc.

So, I invite you to DISCOVER SCIENCE!

The Rocket Was My Favorite Part!

This year, I really struggled with our end of the day routine. It was absolutely bonkers. There was little consistency and I felt like I was going to scream often. I've decided to go with a manageable job system for next year. The students will apply for jobs they want and keep those jobs for a quarter or semester maybe? I haven't thought that far.

Our job chart was inspired by the oh-so-wonderful-and-life-altering-and-life-consuming iPhone.

iHelp

Once I figure out what I want each job to be, I'll write them on the job chart. Exciting, huh?

Now, I'm off to begin my first day of summer break at the spa. Thanks to a wonderful birthday present, I get to spend my afternoon being pampered!

Happy Thursday! :)

That's a FACT!

How many days until Christmas break? Not that I'm counting down or anything...

Anyway! The past week or so, we have been focusing on Fact and Opinion. I wanted to find a super-duper-fantastic idea that would leave my kiddos begging for fact and opinion daily, but I came up short. Many google and pinterest searches came up inconclusive. So! I racked my brain and came up with an idea of my own. Shocker! I didn't know I was capable of this anymore.

I'm a big big BIG fan of anchor charts. I don't know what it is, but I love rallying the troops around the carpet and charting information on a piece of chart paper together. Maybe it's the second grade teacher in me. Anyway, I love it. My original plan was to create an anchor chart for fact and opinion, create our own definitions and write examples... blah blah.  (I say "blah blah" like its a bad thing, but I still highly enjoy that idea!)

I decided to give the anchor chart a little face lift. Paging Dr. Paul Nassif (RHOBH, anyone?)!

Using a bulletin board, I created a giant T-Chart with border and my cricut. One side labeled, "Fact" and the other "Opinion".

First, we ironed our own definitions of fact and opinion and wrote those on chart paper. Then, using sentence strips I modeled writing down an example of an opinion. My opinion statement was, "I believe the Grinch is the best Christmas movie, ever!" We discussed why this was my opinion and it couldn't be proven true. Then, I handed the sentence strips over to the kiddos and let them write! They were chomping at the bit to write down examples of facts and opinions. We were writing, stapling, writing examples, and stapling some more. It was super interactive and high energy in my classroom for the entire lesson!

Yes, 3x3=9

Eh, Football is okay!

Overall, it was a pretty fun lesson and now we have our stellar bulletin board to refer to. Anyone have any other great ideas for fact and opinion? Send them my way!

Have you seen my friend Ashley's delightful blog One Fine Day? If you haven't, you should head over because she's hosting her first giveaway! She's a talented blogger and if you aren't following her, you must start NOW!

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